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Ugh.
This was a good game, I was thinking I was going to write something good, including a nice story on how Justin Smoak got his first major league home run – into the upper home run porch.
But some godawful errors and some really crappy bullpen pitching let the White Sox salvage the last game of the series, and guaranteeing we’ll have another losing April record, although if we win on Friday night, it’ll be just one game under .500.
One positive, though – Feldman was better than he has been. 6 innings, 2 hits, four walks, three runs, but only one earned (hello errors).
Yeah, this game annoyed me. Shame, as it really was cool to see Smoak go upper tank.

Early on, you thought this was going to be the game we signed up for in 2010. Rangers mash early (they did – scoring 5 in the first inning), and then pitch well (which they did for awhile), but it certainly didn’t end up that way.
Josh Hamilton got it started early with a two run home in the bottom of the first. This scored Elvis Andrus, who seems to be doing well leading off now. This was sandwiched around a Michael Young popup. After the homer, Vlad flew out, and then the fun started. Both David Murphy & Justin Smoak walked. What do they do after that? Walk Matt Treanor. Walk the bases loaded after two outs. You’re really begging to lose doing that. A couple more hits gave us our early five spot. Arias singled in Murphy & Smoak. Then Borbon singled in Treanor. Elvis Andrus batted twice in the bottom of the first. Love when that happens, as it means something good has happened. :)
After that, the pitching took over, and the score remained 5-0 until the top of the sixth. Rich Harden was still in the game at this point, and despite his string of zeroes, it wasn’t a performance that made me go “OK, he’ll be fine now”. He did strike out seven in his six innings, but he also walked five, gave up six hits, and the first three runs the Sox got. His performance was parked somewhere between “meh” and “suck”. Probably closer to “meh”, but until he dials it more, I’m going to think it’s “suck” more often than not.
Darren Oliver & Chris Ray held on well enough, but Neftali Feliz did not. Gave us a good John Wetteland impression by allowing three hits and two earned runs in his frame of work. He did get the save, but just as Seattle’s bullpen coach used to do here, it wasn’t easy. The late umpire Durwood Merrill called Wetteland “A heart attack waiting to happen”. Feliz harnessed that tonight for sure.
The play that saved us was mostly the David Murphy double in the bottom of the seventh, which scored Michael Young. Had we not had that, we would have gone extra innings most likely – and you know how those usually end.

On a day when the Rangers’ catching situation turned itself upside down, the guy who was left after the round of musical chairs holding the starters’ job (for now) took advantage of that. Matt Treanor went 2-3 with three RBI’s and a run scored. That run was on his own solo home run, a line shot over the left field wall for the first run of the game in the second inning. He definitely seemed to be boosted by the fact that he’s now the #1 guy here, when he probably expected to get a cup of coffee at best when the season started. Treanor also had a double, so he had the power stroke going. An interesting stat – that was the first home run by a Rangers catcher since Pudge did it last season on September 9th.
Speaking of doubles.. Hamilton & Guerrero chipped in there. In fact the two of them both went 2-4. Other than these guys and Treanor, the only other hit by anything was a single by Ryan Garko.
Rangers pitching was pretty good this game. CJ Wilson continues to be strong early on. In fact, he’s pitching the way I thought Feldman was going to be coming into the season. No matter, we’ll take the wins. Wilson went six innings, giving up five hits and 3 walks for 2 earned runs. Punched out five. Few too many pitches though (104 through six). Get that down a little, and there probably could have easily been another inning pitched on his ledger. I got into his performance – I forget which inning it was now, but one of them ended with him getting a called strike three. The pitch was obviously a strike, and I realized after that that I was into it as I fist pumped on the sofa. Enjoyed that moment, actually. :) Nice stat on Wilson – he’s the first Ranger to begin the season with four consecutive quality starts since two guys did it in 1993 (Charlie Leibrandt & Kevin Brown). Keep on going Christopher.
I do have to confess to being surprised that we beat up a bit on Mark Buehrle. He usually shuts us down well.
We’re 9-11 after this game. I was hoping to be better than this now. Our bullpen has let us down. Still, it could be worse, so I’m not all panicky about the record. It’s close enough to .500 that I’m not worried about it, and the division is too tight for anyone to claim it yet (we’re in last place, but just 2.5 games out). So things are OK. Get Kinsler back, get our bullpen sorted, and our catching stabilized, and we should be OK. It seems like a lot saying that, but it doesn’t feel like it.

I contemplated writing just “shit” for this one, but some other stuff happened. Still, I’m not going to write a lot, since the Rangers irritated me with this loss.
Josh Hamilton finally got his second home run. After his torrid spring training, I thought we had 2008 Josh back. Nope, 2009 is still here. He claims to be healthy, so what’s the deal? It’s almost like he’s never adjusted from the league adjusting to him.
Justin Smoak finally got his first major league hit – a double to left. He also walked. I believe I recall seeing on the telecast that he’s the first Ranger ever to walk in his first four major league games. Nice. His OBP will be seriously impressive if he keeps that up. Wish I could learn that in MLB 2k10. I strike out constantly. :)
Oh, BTW… Shit.

After losing to Detroit by a score of 8-4 on Saturday, the Rangers turned around and beat Detroit by the same score on Sunday afternoon. Although it didn’t start out that way.
Detroit scored three runs in the first inning due to Colby Lewis seemingly not being able to pitch to anyone. He was doing a new impression. Was a combination of Mark Clark and Joe Roa. It started off poorly, with a leadoff home run to Austin Jackson. What followed was a single, double, walk, strikeout, line out, single, and a groundout. Not even in the same ballpark as the word “dominating”. While I don’t have a pitch count by inning, given how many batters got up, it had to be high. The Tigers also tacked on an additional run in the top of the second on a single by Ramon Santiago. However, that was the end of their scoring. At that point, the Tigers had four runs on seven hits, one walk, and two strikeouts. For the other seven innings, they had a total of no runs, one more hit, and one more walk. That was it.
Too bad Lewis couldn’t figure that out from the start. In all, Colby’s line wasn’t too horrific. 6.1 innings, seven hits, two walks, four earned runs. Not great mind, you, but given the feeling after the second inning, it wasn’t too bad at all. Colby did end up with 10 strikeouts, and actually leads the American League in strikeouts.
Only Tim Lincecum over in the NL has more K’s than Colby does right now. Wow.
Offensively, we were led by a home run by David Murphy in the first inning. Michael Young also had a double, and there were nine singles scattered through the lineup. Michael Young was the big story though – driving in five of the eight runs the Rangers scored.
Justin Smoak still doesn’t have a hit, but he did walk and score a run. In fact, only Smoak & Elvis Andrus went hitless this game.
Our catching situation is a bit of a fiasco. I wonder when something will happen with that.

The Rangers busted out early to a 4-0 lead. It was a good feeling early on.
Vlad Guerrero, who has been our best offensive player (with Nelson Cruz right behind him), started it off with a double, scoring both Michael Young & Josh Hamilton. Vlad followed it up in the second with an RBI groundout. Couple that with the RBI single by Elvis Andrus, and the Rangers were feeling good. Up 4-0 after two innings. Scott Feldman on the mound. Life was good.
Then it wasn’t good from the third inning on. The Rangers never scored again, and Feldman gave up eight runs in 3.2 innings of work. In fact, all the scoring for the entire game was done after the top of the fourth. The Tigers got a 3 spot in the third, and a 5 spot in the fourth. Scott wasn’t helped by a few errors, leading to FOUR unearned runs. Granted, 93 pitches in under four innings won’t help oneself, either.
So much for Feldman winning 25 games. :) Ok, I never thought that, but I did think he’d hit 20 this year. He still could I suppose, but he does not look like in 2010 what he looked like in 2009 AT ALL.
Justin Smoak is still an ofer, waiting for his first major league hit. But he continues to take pitches like nobody else on the roster, and walked once.

One complaint. The game was listed as being on Channel 21 last night. It’s a good thing I peeked at the start of the game when it actually started, as at the LAST SECOND, the game was moved to Fox Sports Southwest. That’s unacceptable – because people who regularly time shift like myself get screwed when things like this happen. :(
Anyway, there was a veritable gaggle of Elvis jokes last night. It was Elvis night at the ballpark, so we saw tons of Elvii around the place. Plus a bunch of jokes from Lewin, who loves his mass media references. The official MLB recap had this as a title, “Elvis sends Tigers to Heartbreak Hotel”. Heck, even generally unfunny FSS guy Jim Knox got into it, and I actually laughed at his Elvis impression.
Rich Harden continues to be a disappointment so far. He only went 4.1 innings, but threw 99 pitches. The man doesn’t know a thing about pitch efficiency, it seems. Six hits, two runs, and four walks. Way way way too much. It’s pretty bad so far.
The Rangers got out early in this one with a first inning two run home run by Vlad Guerrero. Oddly enough, given how hot he started it was just his second home run of the season so far. Guerrero also scored later on a really strange play. He scored on something I had never heard of before, that being a “catcher’s balk”. Alex Avila, the Tigers’ catcher moved the live ball on the ground with his catcher’s mask, which is an apparent no-no (I didn’t know that). So that was a freebie.
Michael Young grounded in another run a little later to put us up 4-2. However, the Rangers bullpen had more problems by giving up two runs to the Tigers in the top of the 9th to tie the game.
That’s when the walk off was set up. Justin Smoak walked, was sacrificed over to second. Ryan Garko was intentionally walked, and then Nelson Cruz was unintentionally walked after Joaquin Arias was sent in as a pinch runner for Smoak. That loaded the bases for Elvis Andrus. At first Elvis looked too nervous, and went down 0-2 quickly. However, on the third pitch, he lined a ball to right center for a single for the game winner.
And yeah. Josh Lewin did it. He said “Thank you very much” as Elvis hit the ball to right center. Elvis also got shaving creamed by CJ Wilson and a couple of other guys. CJ even posted a video of it on his twitter account here.
But the big deal for most Rangers fans was the major league debut of Justin Smoak. You always want the touted minor league guy to make a great impression in his first game. However, for this one, I think it was a case of less was more, as Smoak didn’t do anything offensively, but he didn’t embarrass himself. He did, however, show his propensity to take pitches, as he walked twice. His official line was 0-2 with 2BB. No offense to speak of, but it was nice to see him there.